


Chain Letter

by Mysti_Fogg



Series: Mass Effect Spaghetti [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Death, Gen, Letters, Madness, Mental Instability, Reality is Questionable, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 06:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14949333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mysti_Fogg/pseuds/Mysti_Fogg
Summary: Shepard is cleaning out her inbox sometime in ME3 and gets a thank you letter from Han Olar, the volus she saved on Novaria. Unfortunately, it's the exact wrong thing to send to her.





	Chain Letter

_Shepard,_

_They say you're alive. That you cheated death. That sending you this isn't just a pointless exercise as part of my therapy. They say a lot of things._

_I'm still alive. She still isn't. I hear you killed Benezia. Nicely done. Another woman I helped kill, if my information did any good._

_They want me to thank you. The rachni would have killed us all had you not shown up._

_It would have been right._

_Why me and not her? Why did you show up then and not before?_

_They think that they can fix me._

_But maybe you're not really back. Maybe I died. Maybe I didn't close that door in time. Maybe I held it open to give her a chance, and the rachni ripped my suit open, and I died of exposure there on Peak 15. Maybe I'm a martyr, and this is an ugly hallucination before a glorious afterlife._

_But if I'm not, then thank you._

_-Han Olar_

#

They say Shepard died.

They say she's alive, raised from the dead. Lady Lazarus.

It ought to be a joke.

But it isn't.

Maybe none of it is real. It's too insane to be real. Maybe this is a last hallucination before she dies. The Reapers come, one by one the galaxy of possibilities shrink, the synapses stop sparking.

She shut the door in her own face to save him. The best damn pilot in the galaxy. Her friend.

They'll never fix her.

She was broken to begin with.

Broken. Chipped. Glued back together again and again.

She shouldn't be here.

It's an Alliance stress simulation. If she fails, she loses the ship. That's why Alenko is so cruel on Horizon. It's a test. He's doing his duty, trying to break her. He doesn't know that she's secretly broken.

It's a Cerberus game she's trapped inside to see what she does. Miranda and Jacob will monitor her. The devil and the angel on her shoulders, their whispers telling her to follow orders, telling her to kill. She's a weapon, an AI, a thing.

It's a spectre training mission. It never ended. Nihlus stalks the corridors of the ship with a hole in his head.

It's a joke.

A joke on her and Saren to pit them against each other when they should have the same goals.

No. Nihlus is dead on Eden Prime. Saren is dead in the Citadel. Shepard is dead above Alchera and falling, falling, falling.

Why won't the archangel catch her? She always wanted to fly.

It's not real. None of it's real. None of it has been real since the Reapers invaded.

She's in the courtroom, crushed by a column as the Reapers tell her a story of life and death battles while they slowly weave their tendrils into her brain.

None of it was real before that. She was dead over Alchera. That's why the names are all wrong: Afterlife (meet me at the bar), Purgatory, Omega, Dantius Inferno, Dark Star. Illusive Man Illuminated Manuscript with all of the answers, not Elusive not Man. Mordin Souless so of course he died, too.

She was dead on Eden Prime, pushing Alenko out of the beam. She's dead and doesn't know it yet. They're coming and she can't tell anyone because she isn't real. _That's_ why they never listen!

This letter is the only real thing, a message sent from her subconscious to wake her up. If she follows the idea down the rabbit hole, she might open her eyes to an unrecognizable real world.

_Wake up, Shepard! Wake up!_

**Author's Note:**

> I've had requests for scraps and the panic attack that I couldn't quite make a story of. 
> 
> Maybe someday I'll find where it fits. Until then, enjoy.


End file.
